The Interview Question You Should Always Ask

From looking at Microsoft’s surveys of Canadian developers and plain old talking to people (something I love to do), it seems that many people who call themselves “developers” wear many hats, one of which is “manager”. If this is the case, I’ll bet that the title of this article has piqued your curiosity.

Obsessions are one of the greatest telltale signs of success. Understand a person’s obsessions and you will understand her natural motivation. The thing for which she would walk to the end of the earth.

The article goes into more detail, but its general gist is that what a candidate does in his or her spare time might be a good indicator of his or her fit for the position. Looking for a star developer? It’s probably one who’s got a hobby programming project on the side. Seeking an ace IT pro? Someone who’s converted an old computer into a home entertainment unit might be a good pick.

You might want to go beyond the article’s focus on hiring others and turn it around: what do you do in your spare time? Do any of you extracurricular activities suggest that you’d be good at your job?

Except that someone who’s hobbies are all related to their job are usually not well-rounded individuals. Additionally, these kind of folks often burn out as programmers too quickly. In my experience, developers should be passionate about what they do, but well-rounded enough to be able to stay awhile. If you spend all night writing code on a hobby project, guess what? Come morning you are gonna be sick of looking at the screen.

carl: I really like that idea! Generally, when the interview hits that point where the interviewer asks “So, do you have any questions for us?”, the interviewee either falls silent or says “Nothing I can think of.”

Back in 2001, when I was living in San Francisco and working as a developer evangelist (natch!) with Cory Doctorow at the startup he co-founded, OpenCola, we were in talks with eBay and got a tour of their offices.

Many of the people doing customer service were also eBay sellers — in fact, many of eBay’s hires were originally sellers who’d attracted the company’s attention and ended up getting hired that way. We met an Elvis memorabilia expert, who bought and sold Elvis merch and was also a service rep. She had a cube that could’ve easily been a shrine to Elvis; it was far better than the Elvis display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She was all about Elvis; her work at eBay was simply a “how” — a way to channel her love and knowledge of all things Elvis into fulfilling work.

I think this is the point that the article was trying to make: if you can set things up so that you’re essentially getting paid to do your hobby, you’ll be more motivated and perhaps even become a star at what you do for a living. That’s how I feel about my Developer Evangelist position — I still stop myself every now and again and say: “What a minute: I get paid to noddle with computers, talk tech and schmooze?”

That ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it: money for your hobby and Visual Studio for free.

My boss recently told me I got my current tech job because I mentioned I spend the weekends in the mountains. He wanted someone who had a release away from technology and could decompress on the weekends.

Joeyjojo Jr Shabadu writes “If you spend all night writing code on a hobby project, guess what? Come morning you are gonna be sick of looking at the screen.” Um, Joeyjojo, how many real programmers do you know? I know hundreds. If they’re “sick of looking at the screen” it’s because of the JOB. They’re tired of their manager or tired of the project (maybe it’s one of those never-shipping always-changing projects) or sick of the company. They are not tired of writing code. But their hobby is fun and work is a drag. This person needs a new JOB ,not a new sparetime activity.

I’d rather hire the guy who LIKES to write code than the one who says “Yes, I’m a programmer in my job but at home I never turn on a computer. I look forward to the day when I never see another line of code!” I’ve known people like that. They have a problem. I would never want to work with them on my team.

This is so true. I consider myself a hardcore web developer…. I do a lot of freelancing for web development projects. Come time searching for a job on my co-op work term, I get interviews at Microsoft, Sun, and IBM for web related positions….